I am an atheist thread 2

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Thank you for these answers
_A said:
Check - no reported science training.

No.
When the infant is living outside of the mother, it is it’s own person. Until then, the rights of the pregnant person apply.

Nope, she is only a slave to her own will.

She can walk away from an infant. Leave it at a hospital and flee.

As I pointed out, with you or I as doctor in a health facility, a late-term pregnancy would be ‘aborted’ by c-section.

I was asked if killing was wrong. I answered as exactly as I could, given the vague phrasing. If you care to ask a more specific question, I will be glad to try to answer.
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My primary concern is how you have decided these issues. The abortion is typical referencing the death of the child. The c-section of course allows the baby to live or at least have a shot at living. In some posts it seems the idea is a woman even moments from natural delivery can order death to the child, however in other comments it seems the end of pregnancy is all she is allowed. So who makes that decision, and more importantly: How was that decision made?
Why not assume that it occurs before that? How is ‘conception’ such an important event? Is ‘conception’ the moment that the egg is fertilized? Is it marked by the hardening of the eggs shell, or by the first cell division?
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The church treats all this in identical manner. My personal opinion would be when the sperm or egg can no longer be differentiated from the other.
 
Socrates4Jesus said:
Philosophy 101, A: Since everything has a cause there must be a first cause that is not caused itself. Here’s a google of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, if you care to look into the new idea:

google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4RNWN_enUS229US229&q=unmoved+mover
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‘Everything must have a cause’ is a nonsense statement. If you can back it, OK, but if you can’t back it, you certainly can’t back the other statement about your god being an uncaused cause.
 
Texas_Roofer said:
Thank you for these answers
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You are welcome. I hope that you can see from these answers the clear fact that my morals are quite different than yours. I think this shows that the morals you claim are installed by your god are either not installed by a god, or he is not very good at installing morals.
I don’t want to let this thread turn into an abortion thread, so if you want to talk about abortion, I suggest that you go start another thread. I merely wanted to demonstrate that your notion that everyone has the same morals is a false one.
Texas_Roofer said:
My primary concern is how you have decided these issues. The abortion is typical referencing the death of the child. The c-section of course allows the baby to live or at least have a shot at living. In some posts it seems the idea is a woman even moments from natural delivery can order death to the child, however in other comments it seems the end of pregnancy is all she is allowed.
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In fact, the woman can destroy the child at any time. What I am suggesting is that whenever a woman decides to end a pregnancy, for whatever reasons, she have the assistance of medical professionals to reduce the loss of life.
Texas_Roofer said:
So who makes that decision, and more importantly: How was that decision made?
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The medical professionals make the decision. They are used to making life-or-death decisions. Ask yourself what you would do, if you were the doctor, then realize that the doctors will be just like you - reasonable, caring women and men.
 
_A said:
You have read about, and thought about this ‘moral absolutes’ idea for quite a while. It is new to me, and dropping names like Kant is not going to convince me of anything either. I am not familiar with his work.
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A, I think it might be a good idea, for the purpose of “constructive” debate to back up a little.

You started this thread with the question, if I may paraphrase, how does one tell if a revelation is halluncinatory or reality? First of all, there has been some confusion and intermixing on this thread, between a seeming disruption of the laws of nature, as in the Fatima vision AND, the type of intellectual relvelation on the order of what Teresa of Avila, a catholic mystic, experienced, and which she described as an intellectual locution. This is a crucial distinction, and the two should not be entertwined, at least in terms of your concern that "independent verification is required to test credibility…more on that in a minute.

So, your original question, provoked, on the part of several, I believe PAX among them, to argue that a “relvelation can only be judged by its fruits.” Whereupon, you asked, what do you mean by “fruits” and can good “fruits” come from hallucinations. That is where I used the term “virtue” to help define fruits, hence, the debate on what constitutes virtue and are there moral absolutes in this context.

That is how the “moral absolute idea” came into the conversation.

In “visions” that apparently disrupt the laws of nature, like Fatima, every attempt should be made to judge them by the empirical method. These examples are rare, especially in Christian traditions other than Roman Catholic, but, even Rome in these examples has not verified their authenticity for usually years of investigation. None of these have been a situation where a group of people or one or two individuals have a vision and the church says immediately, ‘ok, let’s build a shrine!’

However, these examples don’t interest me nearly as much as the intellectual relvelation which is not uncommon in human history, from Pascal, to Teresa, to perhaps your next door neighbor. In these instances, the “relvelation” is an existential experience interiorly, meaning only, that it happens in the mind from the inside out, so to speak. There is no scientific method which can substantiate whether that relvelation was a hallucination or God speaking to the soul. And, the external senses have no role, it is solely an “intellectual vision.” That does not mean there is not a real palpability to it. In this case, the only authentication possible is whether the individual becomes a better person, hence we’re now back to virtue and moral absolutes. Are there moral principles of behavior which stand the test of the eons of human history. Are there standards of right and wrong? Or, are moral standards completely random and relative as you are arguing.

True, morals are a social construct, man is a social animal. However, it is not true that there is not consensus over the centuries, in different societies, of moral norms and standards. In fact, these principles represent the “inviolable and objective demands of a universal moral law.” It derives from the concept of “personhood” and the dignity of the “person”, which Judaism, itself, originated. Let’s take the concept of human rights, of “liberty,” “equality,” which even you concede in an earlier post are embedded in a “legal sense,” as moral standards. (I think that was the post where your font appreciatively enlarged!) There is, I argue, a moral logic behind these principles.

Parenthetically,I think they are hard-wired in the “intelligent” & embedded instructions in the mind/brain connections. Have you ever noticed, for example, 4 or 5 year olds on a playground? A common refrain when one little boy usurps another’s marbles, “hey, that’s not fair, you stole my marbles.!” It’s rather amazing as I see my 2 year old grandson, how he already has a certain sense of right and wrong. But, that’s another argument.

Pope John Paul II states, “In this sense, it is a matter for serious concern that some people today deny the universality of human rights, just as they deny that there is a human nature shared by everyone. To be sure, there is no single model for organizing the politics and economics of human freedom; different cultures and different historical experiences give rise to different institutional forms of public life in a free and responsible society. But it is one thing to affirm a legitimate pluralism of “forms of freedom”, and another to deny any universality or intelligibility to the nature of man or to the human experience.”
to be continued…

.
 
@A page 2

A few final points, if you don’t think the force of gravity is “true”, which really is a bad term, I would prefer to say, it’s a fact in the world we inhabit, then, it becomes difficult to debate. In any debate, the parties need to agree on more that they disagree on, or there are no “a priori” logical foundations. If terms can’t even be defined with agreement, it’s a meaningless activity.

Secondly, I’m not dropping names (Kant, for example.) I’m trying to back up what I argue with demonstrable philosophical evidence, that is how any “name” gets brought into the thread. I’ve seen alot of accusations on this thread that one isn’t backing up with authoritative support what they say. Actually, A, we are not discussing in a vacuum, as though we are the only two individuals, at the beginning of time, debating from “scratch,” so to speak. Believe it or not, we are not the first two people to concern ourselves with these issues…there is a long, long history of the greatest minds, who have devoted their lives to these issues. To excuse yourself from trying to access their expertise and wisdom, is rediculous—**We do not have to re-invent the wheel!**If you have not read much philosophy, then I suggest you start, it’s an enlightening experience.

I consider it an esteemed privilege to have access to the “thought history” of those who came before us.

One “second final point,” these examples you mention of individuals, ie the witch burners in Salem, are “straw men” in the sense that, what a localized group of people or a single individual, imagine to be messages from God, to perform evil, has nothing to do with the values and “moral absolutes” that the long tradition of a religion, ie Christianity, enshrines in doctrine. Even, the Spanish Inquisition, an abysmal descent into pure evil, by a fragment of the Roman Catholic Church, in Spain, was not condoned by the whole church, in other locals, at the time, nor was it condoned “in toto”, including the Eastern Church, over time. Men, in certain times and places, including a few popes, have descended into grave and mortal sin, however, in time their deeds were condemned and their rationales shunned
 
Thank you again it is interesting how we read the same sentence and find 2 different meanings from that sentence.
_A said:
You are welcome. I hope that you can see from these answers the clear fact that my morals are quite different than yours. I think this shows that the morals you claim are installed by your god are either not installed by a god, or he is not very good at installing morals.
I don’t want to let this thread turn into an abortion thread, so if you want to talk about abortion, I suggest that you go start another thread. I merely wanted to demonstrate that your notion that everyone has the same morals is a false one.
In fact, the woman can destroy the child at any time. What I am suggesting is that whenever a woman decides to end a pregnancy, for whatever reasons, she have the assistance of medical professionals to reduce the loss of life.

The medical professionals make the decision. They are used to making life-or-death decisions. Ask yourself what you would do, if you were the doctor, then realize that the doctors will be just like you - reasonable, caring women and men.
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It seems to me you are searching for a way not to needlessly kill this baby, but that contradicts the original authority of the pregnant woman. So to me it seems you are having a problem denying the morals god imposed on you. So what is the process you used to decide what should or should not be done?
_A said:
‘Everything must have a cause’ is a nonsense statement. If you can back it, OK, but if you can’t back it, you certainly can’t back the other statement about your god being an uncaused cause.
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FYI this is the same comment I made earlier when I wrote today’s physics determines tomorrows event ( ie flood comes from rain, rain comes from temperature loss, Temperature loss comes from loss of ultraviolet exposure, etc, etc
 
_A said:
‘Everything must have a cause’ is a nonsense statement. If you can back it, OK, but if you can’t back it, you certainly can’t back the other statement about your god being an uncaused cause.
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I believe, Mr. A, that you just made an argument in favor of there being a God who is not caused himself! Yes, not everything must have a cause; i’d have to agree with you. God, for one, must not have a cause. Indeed, i stand corrected.

😛

Regarding cause and effect, i was unaware of anyone or anything else that is uncaused. Can you think of anything else, or anyone else, besides God that, or who, is not the effect of a cause? If you can, please show me.

🤷
 
phooney said:
@Socrates4Jesus

“LOL! Maybe you and future U.S. President wantabe Mit
Romney would hit it off?”

shudder!!

“Logically, it makes sense to me that everything has a cause, except the one who is the cause of everything. Even time must have a beginning, if not also an end.”

That does feel right doesn’t it? Makes sense to me as well in a way, but I’m very wary about applying what feels right and intuitive to us to a “time” without time that doesn’t necessarily adhere to the physical laws of our universe.

"We do not, after all, have the original autographs of the books that comprise the OT.

If the scribes who made the copies were careless, i suppose that in 1,000 years the books of the OT would not resemble the original at all; do you agree?"

Well, probably not I suppose but, as you mention, if we don’t HAVE the originals, then it is going to be mighty difficult to make the claim either way, wouldn’t you say?

“Well, from our conversation in the previous discussion thread i’m glad to see that we did come to an agreement: Ezekiel did accurately predict an event that happened only once in the entire documented history of the world!”

Come on now, that’s quite a simplification! I haven’t scanned through all of history for descriptions of this kind of thing happening, but I am willing to admit that the throwing of an entire city into the sea seems like it would be a reasonably rare event, so for that reason I’m happy to go forward with the argument on those grounds 🙂

However, I don’t think we ever came to any agreement regarding the city being thrown into the sea rather than the sea rising up over the city, no agreement about “found”, combined with the uneccesary repetition found in the prophecy instead of specific prophetic information, I could just as easily state here that we agreed that the prophecy was far too vague for the purposes of “valid prophecy”!

Further specific points from the my last post in the last thread on this topic:

“You’ve also still got quite a task ahead of you if you want to demonstrate how Alexander the Great could NOT have heard about this particular prophecy. I mean, not only do you have to account for everybody that he would have spoken to, but also all the people that the people he spoke to had spoken to, etc. (ugly sentence alert!)”

“It certainly may have been a lucky guess as well, as we all know that the books of the bible weren’t the only writings that could have been in there. Perhaps it was chosen out of many potential prophecies simply because it had come true.”

“How about for the next prophecy you come up with something that wasn’t fulfilled by the actions of people, then we can jump right past the “could they have heard of the prophecy beforehand?” arguement. Also, hopefully something with a specific date, preferrably right down to the minute and second (this level of detail should be well within the capabilities of an all knowing God, I hope), but I understand if it is as vague as just the date.”
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Phooney:

In answering all of your objections (please see my previous replies) i realized that we have nearly a dozen topics of discussion going on at the same time! I have a proposal: To make things less daunting and more enjoyable for both of us, would you be interested in choosing just one topic? I won’t be offended if we steer toward the one subject you find most thought provoking and leave the rest behind.

👍
 
_A said:
‘Everything must have a cause’ is a nonsense statement. If you can back it, OK, but if you can’t back it, you certainly can’t back the other statement about your god being an uncaused cause.
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I believe you are mistaken.

In science, ever since I was a sqirmy little first grader, I’ve been taught that something is not produced from nothing.

The cosmos, I humbly submit to you, could not have been produced from nothing; God produced the cosmos.

St. Thomas Aquinas, baby, go-go-go!
 
Hello,
Its obvious you are experiencing a conversion and are discerning what is taking place in your heart. The very fact you have questioned the experiences of the faithful should reveal some of the answers you are looking for. I pray you continue seeking.
Pat
 
@ontologysue

Hi there!

“I’m amused by the fact that you keep pushing the point that animal communication is simply a less complex version of human language!”

I’m glad your strawman amuses you. I certainly didn’t say that animal communication was a less complex version of human language, but they undoubtably are at least examples of basic language. Also, as the chimp examples show, a basic form of human language is not above them, they have demonstrated a grasp approximately equivalent to a two-three year old human.

“And yet, he sees no evolutionary forerunner to our language in the animal kingdom. Even evolutionists can’t link (through evidence) the development in humans of understanding and self awareness.”

This means absolutely nothing for your case unfortunately. There are plenty of gaps in knowledge. Though this is the first time I’ve seen anybody try to put God into this particular gap, I am sure you and Schroeder aren’t the first. A gap in knowledge, or ignorance, can never be evidence for anything except the ignorance itself. The sun used to be explained by the immaterial, now it isn’t. The way the sun couldn’t possibly keep on burning with the amount of fuel it apparently had used to be explained by the immaterial, now it isn’t. The weather used to be explained by the immaterial, now it isn’t. The diversity and complexity of life used to be explained by the immaterial, now it isn’t. Sickness used to be explained by the immaterial, now it isn’t. Immaterial has been shown lacking time and time again any time there has been any evidence to work with. Even if we may not know the precise origins of our language, your arbitrary answer is of no use. Even if we may not know the precise origins of our language, it is not an unponderable problem:

“You show me a scientist alive today who contends human language is just a more advanced form of animal communication. It’s rediculous!”

Stephen Pinker writes that the area of our brain has an equivalent in other higher primates, though it doesn’t appear to be used for language in them. “Broca’s area, involved in speech, has a homologue (evolutionary counterpart) in monkeys, but they obviously don’t use it for speech” (How the mind works, page 184) And I can’t help but think “The Language Instinct” also by Stephen Pinker, might delve into this topic a bit deeper.

Here is a masters thesis presented on the natural origin and evolution of language: hem.hj.se/~lsj/langevod.pdf (the author also has a PhD in physics apparently)

Deacon, Terence W., 1998. The Symbolic Species: The co-evolution of language and the brain. New York: W.W. Norton.

Carl Sagan (yes I know you requested Scientists “alive today” but as I am such a fan of the guy and he died not all that long ago, I have decided to quote him anyway)

“As we’ve discussed, the words can stand for objects, actions, people, other animals, or the chimp itself. There are common and proper nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Chimps and bonobos can request, and therefore are clearly thinking about things or actions not now present-food, for example, or grooming.”

“Some of them invent and tend to abide by at least a few simple grammatical rules. They can label and categorize inanimate objects, animals and people using not just the things themselves but arbitrary words representin the things. They are capable of abstraction. They seem sometimes to use language and gesture to lie and deceive, and to reflect an elementary understanding of cause and effect.” (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors pages 381-382)

“Many of us would grant that a child of two or three who has a vocabulary and verbal dexterity comparable to that of the most accomplished chimps or bonobos - no matter how glaring their deficits in grammar and syntax - has language.” (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, pages 382-383 citing Derek Bickerton)

Bickerton has a phD in Linguistics, is still alive, and is co-author of “Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain, 2000”, perhaps you’d be interested. He “proposes that the early speech of children is a ‘protolanguage’ fundamentally different from fully developed human languages, that this protolanguage may be accessible to apes, and that it was used by our ancestors in the transition from apes to humans.” (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, note 60 for chapter 19, page 474)

Now you show me a Scientist alive today who has used the scientific method to demonstrate the immaterial, not an abstraction, I look forward to that.
 
continued @ontologysue

“But, if you’re a materialist purist, you probably don’t believe in a self or subject who is conscious, there’s no rationality in reality because it’s incoherent to talk of matter being rational!”

Depends on how you define “self” “conscious” and “rational” I suppose.

“You probably don’t believe in gravity, electromagnetism, the weak or strong nuclear forces as they are not matter.”

Now you seem to be confusing matter and material. There’s nothing you’ve mentioned here that is currently scientifically explained by immaterial concepts.

“A true materialist has to accept “randomness” as the only explanation for the complexity, order, and preciseness in the fields of biology, cosmology and physics.”

I’ve covered this already, I don’t think I could be considered a “true” materialist, as I won’t discount the possibility of the immaterial 100%. However, with that said, there has been no evidence for the immaterial. You keep on implying that this is the conclusion modern science is taking, when this is blatantly not the case. You have been unable to describe what “immaterial” might even be, except describing an infinite consciousness or a thought or intelligence, all emergent properties of material brains. You have been unable to describe the experiments and observations that point towards something immaterial. Without this information, you cannot present a scientific conclusion. At best you can present a hypothesis, though without any defined falsifiability or methodology for testing, this would be a highly generous definition of what you are presenting, “wild conjecture” would perhaps be a more suitable term to describe it. This being the case your conjecture, while technically plausible, has no value in a logical discussion.

Wild conjectures aren’t inherently “bad” of course, the imagination is a wonderful thing that shouldn’t be, and probably can’t be, restrained, but the problem seems to be that you have completely bought into your imagination with your wholehearted belief, and this is so very far from a justified belief.

“Materialism just can’t come to grips with the evidence in molecular biology, quantum physics or cosmology.”

I apologise of course if you know of such evidence, experiements, etc but just haven’t presented it and I would love to hear your thoughts and examples. I’ll always be happy to learn something new.

“It’s not me stating the meta-physical aspect of language. I’m just trying to understand what modern scientific evidence is concluding, namely, that by it’s very nature, the act of comprehending the meaning of a concept, is not physical.”

Right, it’s abstract, not immaterial.

“Can a material object perceive meaning?”

Apparently so.

“They are discovering, through evidence, that there is no lobe or specific neuron etc where the “self” resides, for example. They can map where certain emotions are in the brain but they cannot make physical the “experience” “I” have of sadness, or love, or humor. They can destroy a part of my brain that allows me to feel sadness, but they haven’t destroyed “sadness.””

Also, when you think about particular things at different times, different parts of your brain have been shown to be in use! This is certainly going to make it difficult to pin things down to a specific neuron, as you seem to require. What an amazing paragraph though, with one foul swoop you have wiped away the mountains of evidence of mood-altering drugs and hallucinogens, well done. I understand moods and emotions in terms of chemical reactions, the evidence of molecular biology and neuroscience. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I don’t feel them just like everybody else.

“It is the evidence scientists are accumulating through micro biology that is leading them to postulate a meta-physical reality, not my wishful thinking.”

Well… if you say so. As already mentioned, I have no problem with people postulating whatever they want, but to cite ignorance and gaps in knowledge as the evidence that leads to such things, really says a lot about those conclusions.

“I’m simply reacting to what far greater minds than mine are discovering, and the fact that language and consciousness are baffling scientists from a classical physics point of view, only means they are discovering new truths.”

Indeed, there are only a very few people that are on the cutting edge of a particular discipline, and even they have to bow to the wisdom of people working in other fields, and work together. I’m also for new truths, as long as they are backed up by evidence. Though I disagree with you the amount of “bafflement” on many topics apparently, I hope you can at least learn to see that this “bafflement” does not constitute as evidence of any kind.
 
yet more continuation @ontologysue

““deeply religious nonbeliever”, that sounds like something I might have said about 30 years ago!”

No shame in being beaten to something by Einstein!

“In terms of a personal God…consider this; I just read an interesting argument; if God exists, He cannot be limited in any way. To be impersonal is a limitation, ie, “subpersonal;” therefore, God must be perfectly “personal.””

Ha! Nice one 🙂 I hope you don’t find it very compelling though. It relies on the vagueness of the definitions of personal and perfect, and it is simply an assertion that being impersonal is a limitation. It would be just as easy to postulate a God not limited by being personal, which puts constraints on it’s characteristics, therefore God must be perfectly impersonal.

I heard an argument against the existence of God that I consider to be in the same category as the one you mentioned. I hope I can do it justice!
If God is all powerful, then God must be able to overcome the greatest of obstacles in order to achieve his goals (such as creating the universe). The greatest possible obstacle to achieving a goal would be to not exist. Therefore an all powerful God must not exist.
 
@Socrates4Jesus

Hi again!

“That of which i am speaking is not an absence of time but something beyond time, or what theologians refer to as eternity.”

At this point, I do not recognise “Theologians” as having any authority on matters of physics.

“We are getting into the realm of speculation, now. However, even though you or i might not be able to comprehend this, we might be able to apprehend it.”

Worthy goals!

“Now, it is not mere fantasy that there are dimensions beyond the four we experience. Einstein was one of the first to prove mathematically the likelihood of this. Physicists have discovered that there are many more dimensions beyond what we know and experience.”

Whoa back! Here is where you go beyond what the evidence dictates. At the moment, all that we have are the mathematically sound models that are consistent with observations (in our own 4 dimensions), which require that there be extra dimensions. At the moment these are only hypotheses, as there has been no evidence for the other dimensions as yet. The loop vortex theory and “ether” used to be such mathematically sound and consistent models as well, so I wouldn’t advise putting all your eggs in this kind of basket. I consider these kind of things inherently better than “Goddidit” hypotheses though, because while they don’t yet have evidence for them, they are at least mathematically sound, and that counts for something. They also make predictions that might be testable. To give a very vague example (because I can’t remember the details) M-Theory, one of the hypotheses that postulates 11 dimensions, could explain an observation of some kind of radiation from a star moving slower than expected, because in addition to going through our 3 known spatial dimensions, it is also going through the other 7 postulated by m-theory. I seem to recall there being not much confidence in this particular observation, so this is obviously pretty inconclusive, yet still interesting.

There are also mathematically consistent models that require completely different numbers of dimensions in order to work. The most recent one that I heard of has been postulated by a man named Garrett Lisi. His theory is getting a fair bit of attention because it is being hailed as an “exceptionaly simple” theory of everything and requires only the 4 dimensions already known to us. There has also been a lot of spin put on the story because he surfs in his free time. 🤷

“I suggest that if there is a God, he, she or it would exist in these dimensions”

Plausible of course.

“physicists know exist but cannot experience”

Physicists HYPOTHESISE exist and hope to test many of these with the large hadron collider, if it finishes on time (aka behind schedule) next year.

“Eternity, the Bible suggests, is not an absence of time but something beyond time. It is a more real way of experiencing time similar to living in three dimensions is a more real way of experiencing space.”

Unfortunately, this is vague to the point of incoherence.

“So, when i say time had a beginning, i’m not suggesting that before time there was no time; rather, what i’m implying is that before time there was still eternity, which is a more real way of experiencing time. This also makes sense, if we can believe those who know more about this than you or i could ever know - modern physicists.”

I didn’t say it was YOU saying there was no time before our time, that is simply the direct result of time being a dimension of our universe. Maybe there are other universes out there with their own time. Is there anything like time between universes or outside this one? I don’t know, we simply don’t have enough evidence yet to make that call, and there’s no reason to insert an arbitrary answer. What, if any, of our physical laws apply outside of the universe? Again, I don’t know, we simply don’t have enough evidence yet to make that call, and there’s no reason to insert an arbitrary answer as you do here and repeat in post 447 directed at A.

“C.S. Lewis - who was an extremely bright atheist until he became an even more brilliant Christian - used this metaphor: To God, all of time is like a time line on an open page in a book. He lives outside this time line, looking down on it, as if the time we experience was standing still. At any moment, he can reach out his hand and touch this time line, and alter the events of people’s lives.”

I can certainly appreciate that that is a nice metaphor, but under the poetry it is really just a bald assertion not backed up by anything.
 
continued @Socrates4Jesus

“Lets say, just for the sake of argument, that a copy of a book of the Bible is found today that predates any known copy of that book by a thousand years.”

But… wouldn’t that put them in completely the wrong time period?

“I’m still willing to look at any evidence you have that Alexander the Great actually did get his hands on a copy of Ezekiel’s writings or had any contact with Jewish rabbis at all. Modern historians discount any such stories of Alexander the Great meeting Jewish religious leaders as complete fables or fabrications that have no hint of truth.”

Not quite what I’m saying though. The event that I speculate about need not have been recorded and proved right or wrong by history. I put it to you that it is a very reasonable and simple explanation for Alexander’s actions. It is more parsimonious and similar to countless other events than God speaking to Ezekiel. The evidence of Alexander scraping the city into the sea is equally supportive of this speculation as it is of your speculation.

“Now, if you found something in the Bible that was not accurate about fishing, well, i’d certainly trust your opinion.”

You’d have to go to A for that, not me!

“I’m still willing to look at any legitimate prophecy in the Bible you can find that is obviously false. I’ve been searching the text for many years and have found none. You would think that of all the hundreds of predictions in the Bible someone would be able to find at least one that is false, wouldn’t you?”

Well, the one regarding the pillars of the earth was clearly wrong, but you dismissed that as not a prophecy due to her not saying “thus saith the lord”, though I still think that many people would have claimed that this was a prophecy had it been true, even if the wording was the same.

Despite that, Job also mentions the pillars of the earth, as well as saying that the earth is suspended over nothing. Pillars of the earth don’t exist, the earth isn’t suspended (suspension implies an up or down in space), and spacetime is not nothing. Internally contradictory to itself and externally contradictory to reality. Perhaps this is poetry, perhaps this isn’t prophecy, perhaps this is divine allegory. Regardless, the bible doesn’t tell us which parts to take literally, and which parts not. Of any of the parts of the bible that are historically accurate, there is only evidence for perfectly natural events. I wish Jesus had have, instead of simply walking on water, prophesised a lake of solid water at standard desert temperatures that would appear suddenly in Israel on December the 12th 1920. The lake would still act like normal water for people who’s names start with Y, A, W, E and H and would never evaporate. We would be able to look at this lake today then, and agree, that our laws of physics break down at this lake. Just an example, sorry for going off on a tangent.

“Since there is not one of hundreds that is false, what does that tell you about the authors’ claims that God gave these predictions to them?”

In some of them, since the original wording and/or the current wording (which may or may not be the same) are vague enough to be shoehorned into many different situations, it tells me nothing. Since some ‘prophecies’ (and prophecy confirmations) were written after the fact, it tells me nothing. Since some of them are able to be fulfilled by people who would have or could have known about the prophecies and acted specifically TO make them come to pass, it tells me nothing and, indeed, worries me when there are so many prophecies of the end of the world that some people might actually look forward to. Since so very few of them have dates related to them (you mention you’ve been studying them for years and know of only 2) and thus, even if it can be conclusively proven that they haven’t taken place, they have the most paper-thin of get out of jail free cards “it hasn’t happent…YET”, it tells me nothing.

“If you cannot think of one untrue prophecy in the Bible, perhaps you might do the world a favor and begin searching for one. When you find it, you could write a book and show the world how Moses and Peter are wrong and how Judaism and Christianity are built on a foundation of lies. I’d be extremely interested in examining what evidence you find to see if what you say is true.”

Those books have already been written, but of course the debate is still going.
 
yet more continuation @Socrates4Jesus

“If your point is that we disagree as to what the author’s true intentions were when he wrote the book of the Ezekiel, i would say that is a fair assumption, and we can agree to disagree. In this case, i hope you would appreciate that my interpretation is one that is not unreasonable.”

Agreed, as long as you can also agree that your interpretation isn’t persuasive for one that hasn’t presupposed God.

“If your point is that you have proven false a specific prediction of the prophet Ezekiel, i’d think it worthwhile to take another look at your arguments.”

I think it is too vague to prove really, and has thus been relieved of much prophetic power. You’ve put much stock in it becoming a place to spread fishnets and never being found, and being a bare rock.

Quoting you in post 1056 of the last thread:

“Again, it is important to allow the context of a passage of ancient literature determine it’s intended meaning. Ezekiel’s words give the context:
I will bring you to a horrible end and you will be no more.
(Ezekiel 26:21)
… you have come to a horrible end
and will be no more.
(Eze. 27:36)
… you have come to a horrible end
and will be no more.
(Eze. 28:19)”

From post 867:

“the place where the ancient mainland city of Tyre once stood is today a bare rock where fishermen still dry their nets. There is nothing left standing of the ancient city on the coast for it was brought to a horrible end. All of the ruins of the city, even the dirt of the streets, were dumped into the sea by Alexander the Great’s army.”

I decided to have a quick look at this bare rock on google maps:

maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=33.270538,35.200131&spn=0.013168,0.019956&t=h&z=16&om=1

Here’s some smaller photos from different angles:
thebtr.com/pages/middleeast/cities/lebanon/tyre.jpg
geotimes.org/aug07/nn_sandbar1.jpg

This shows the peninsula that now connects the former island and the mainland, both the island and the former mainland area to the east of this point are very much built up at the moment. Look again at the picture, can you find a city?

“Today it is the fourth largest city in Lebanon” answers.com/topic/tyre-lebanon

“The location of the city of Tyre is not in doubt, for it exists to this day on the same spot and is known as Sur.” (Katzenstein, H.J., The History of Tyre, 1973, p9)

As a side note, I found that the name of the city actually MEANS “rock”. This meshes well with my speculation that it is merely a motivational proclaimation, and this is just a clever little play on words. Telling the rock that you will make it a bare rock could be construed as meaning you will kill all the people in the city.

According to Encyclopedia Brittanica “Excavations have uncovered remains of the Greco-Roman, Crusader, Arab, and Byzantine civilizations, but most of the remains of the Phoenician period lie BENEATH THE PRESENT TOWN.” britannica.com/eb/article-9074016/Tyre

But how is that possible if it was scraped down to bare rock?

So Ezekiel 26:20 is a perfectly reasonable bone of contention, amongst others.

“There are two predictions of which i’m aware regarding dates. One gives the exact number of days the Jewish people would be in captivity before they were allowed to return to ancient Palestine,”

So nothing you’re aware of that don’t involve people fulfilling the prophecy? This is disappointing, but you can only work with the material available! Of the two, I would prefer to look at this one, as with the lack of contemporary accounts of Jesus, I doubt very much being able to prove one way or the other in regards to “exact days”.

“Let me know if any of these areas of prophecy interest you, or if you would rather discuss something else.”

I appreciate that this might take you some preparation time and that there are other aspects of life to take care of, so no time pressure from me. Thanks also for the wide selection 🙂

“Philosophy 101, A: Since everything has a cause there must be a first cause that is not caused itself. Here’s a google of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, if you care to look into the new idea:”
Something from Aristotle is “new”?

"i realized that we have nearly a dozen topics of discussion going on at the same time! I have a proposal: To make things less daunting and more enjoyable for both of us, would you be interested in choosing just one topic? I won’t be offended if we steer toward the one subject you find most thought provoking and leave the rest behind. "

LOL! I see this post only AFTER I finish typing out my latest batch of posts, typical! These conversations do tend to spiral into wildly varied topics, don’t they? It’s a very difficult thing you propose, I must admit to finding much of the discussion quite fascinating, I’ll have to carefully consider suggesting any narrowing.
 
@A

"“Originally Posted by mgrfin
but living ‘down under’ you don’t see much of it, do you?”

Is that some sort of slight against those living ‘down under’?
I hope I have misunderstood."

Not a slight at all, A! He is merely pointing out that most of the universe is in California and I thank him for his highly relevant contribution!
 
@SearchForGod

“The cosmos, I humbly submit to you, could not have been produced from nothing; God produced the cosmos.”

Non-sequitor, and nobody here has been saying our universe came from nothing.
 
@ Phooney

But don’t you see that that is only explanation for how everything came into being? That is the only non-deity-dependent explanation for how things came into being.

Evolution and the Big Bang Theory all rely on something that started it all… A huge cosmic explosion… A first common ancestor… But where did that come from? Where did that mass of energy come from? Where did that first common ancestor come from? The scientists can’t produce an answer! Without God there is none!

I would therefore argue that there must be a “god” who is the First, the Beginning, and the Creator of these secular explanations of the universe coming into being.

To better explain myself I’d suggest you look over Question 2 of St. Thomas Aquinas. He makes the case that God’s existence can be proven in five different ways.
 
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